ANZPT Gold Coast: It's All Wong On Friday The 13th

Poker players can be a strangely superstitious lot. Many own a lucky card protector, some wear their lucky cap at every event, while some players have been known to re-wear the same clothes over and over for the duration of the tournament to avoid the wrath of lady luck.

If there's ever a day where those superstitions make any sense, it would have to be today, Friday the 13th. Some players had to avoid walking under ladders or crossing a black cat on their way to the casino today, but it didn't do much good for the 90 players who met their demise during Day 2 of the ANZPT Gold Coast Main Event.

It was fitting on Friday the 13th, that a man named "Darko" was our runaway chip leader to start the day. However his lead soon evaporated as the peloton soaked up the advantage, led by Ricky Kroesen and George Moussa.

Ricky Kroesen had a wild day, but made it through to Day 3 action

Both managed to tease the chip lead as they cracked 200,000 in the early goings, but both would hit hurdles later in the day. Kroesen managed to recover and survive the day on a short stack, but Moussa fell chasing another big pot when his nut flush draw failed to deliver.

We lost our defending champion in Scott Kerr as well as the most recent ANZPT champion in Julian Cohen. However the big elimination of the day was undoubtedly the fall of ANZPT Player of the Year points leader Tony Hachem. His POY lead is now under threat for the first time this year after he ran his pocket jacks into the pocket queens of JP Yahn. It's the second consecutive year that Hachem has missed out on points up north, and he may rue the missed opportunity if his nearest rival, John Maklouf, manages to reach the money tomorrow.

While young guns Dave Allan (123,500), Liam O'Rourke (227,000), Dominic Coombe (114,000) and Joel Dodds (217,500) all had moments towards the top, the big story of the day was with Hong Kong's Nick Wong.

Nick Wong is the ANZPT Gold Coast chip leader

Wong started his surge when his pocket queens cracked the pocket aces of Tom Grigg. He jumped to the chip lead and maintained that advantage for most of the afternoon, before ending the day with a bang with the largest pot of the tournament.

It was Wong's king-queen up against Nuno Da Silva's queen-ten on a flop of T♠J♦Q♣. The turn bricked but Wong spiked a king on the river to make a bigger two pair to cement his place as the man to catch on Day 3 with 376,500 chips.